Thursday, April 2, 2015

When we studied in
Schools, zero mark [getting nothing]
was comically termed as ‘kozhi muttai’
[egg of a hen]…. In English it actually is ‘goose egg’ referring the
numeral zero, indicating the failure of a team to score in a game. In cricket, a
duck is a batsman's dismissal for a score of zero. Batsman getting out first ball is ‘golden
duck’. It is stated that the reference
to ‘duck’s egg’ dates back to centuries when Prince of Wales scored a nought in
1866.

What
is the shape of an egg … a search revealed – ‘the
shape of an egg is approximate by "long" half of a of a prolate
spheroid, joined to a "short" half of a roughly sphericalellipsoid,
or even a slightly oblate spheroid’.
Certainly not easy to figure out what it is all about…. An oval (from Latin
ovum, "egg") is a closed curve in a plane which
"loosely" resembles the outline of an egg. The term is not very
specific, but in some areas (projective geometry, technical drawing, etc.) it
is given a more precise definition, which may include either one or two axes of
symmetry. In common English, the term is used in a
broader sense: any shape which reminds one of an egg.

There are many
Cricket grounds that are oval in shape.
The one at Adelaide, South Australia is known as ‘Adelaide Oval’. The more famous is the one in South
London. It is ‘the Oval’, sometimes
referred to as the Kia Oval due to commercial sponsorship, is at
Kennington, in the London Borough of Lambeth, south London. It has been the home ground of Surrey County
Cricket Club since 1845. It was the first ground in England to host
international Test cricket, in September 1880. The final Test match of the
English season is traditionally played there. In addition to cricket, it has
hosted many other sporting events
including rugby matches. Kennington is
a district situated in London, England, south of the River Thames.

Indian
moment of glory came at Oval in 1971 – on that tour when Indian spinners –
Bedi, Venkat & Chandra excelled claiming 37 wickets – it was Bhagwath
Chandrasekhar – whose eight wickets brought India their biggest win to date.
Years later, in the final Test of 1979
Series, Sunil Gavaskar played a classic knock in the 4th innings. Chasing a
mammoth total of 438 runs in the fourth innings, he set the The Oval stadium on
fire with a masterly knock of 221 runs.

Not to be confused
with Kennington, there is another – the ‘Kensington Oval’ in the capital city
Bridgetown on the island of Barbados. Besides many other important matches, the
finals of 2007 World Cup between Australia and Sri Lanka was played here. It was a rain-shortened match. Australia made a mammoth 281/4 in 38 overs
aided by a brilliant century of Adam Gilchrist (149) and won by 53 runs in D/L
finish.

MailOnline
reports of a perfectly round egg
that was sold on eBay for £480 [Rs.44600 approx]

A hen called Ping
Pong laid a one-in-a-billion perfectly round egg - which was sold on eBay for £480. Owner Kim Broughton,
44, from Latchingdon in Essex, was left shell shocked after her prize Buff
Orpington hen laid the spherical egg on Pancake Day. Ms Broughton and Ping Pong decided to auction
the egg off on eBay and were amazed when it sold for £480. She is planning to
donate the money to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust after a friend's son died from
the disease.

The owner
Kim Broughton has since re-named the Buff Orpington hen –
‘Ping Pong’. Such occurrence of
perfectly spherical egg is believed to be 'one-in-a-billion' chance. Ms Broughton said she had been tempted to cook
and eat the egg before being told it was 'one-in-a-billion'. She said: 'I was
literally about to crack it open to make a pancake when a mate saw the photo I
put on Facebook and messaged me to say 'Don't do it!' – it really went off the
roof.

The
first duck in a Test match was made in the very first Test between Australia
and England at Melbourne in March 1877, when Ned Gregory was caught by Andrew
Greenwood off the bowling of James Lillywhite.